The Three-Body Problem (30 page)

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After logging out of
Three Body
, Wang felt exhausted, the same way he did after each previous session. But this time, he only rested half an hour before logging in again.

This time, against the pitch-black background, an unexpected line of text appeared:

The situation is urgent. The
Three Body
servers are about to be shut down. Please log on freely during the remaining time.
Three Body
will now go directly to the final scene.

20

Three Body
: Expedition

The chilly dawn revealed a bare landscape. There was no pyramid, no United Nations Headquarters, no sign of the Pendulum Monument. Only a dark desert extended to the horizon, just as Wang had seen the first time he had logged in.

But Wang soon realized that he was wrong. What he thought were numerous stones arrayed across the desert were not stones at all, but human heads. The ground was filled with a densely packed crowd.

From where he stood on a small hill, Wang could see no end to the sea of people. He estimated the number of individuals within his view alone to be in the hundreds of millions. All the Trisolarans on the planet were probably gathered here.

The silence of hundreds of millions created a suffocating sense of strangeness.
What are they waiting for?
Wang looked around and noticed everyone was gazing up at the sky.

Wang lifted his face and found the starry sky had been transformed to an astonishing sight: The stars were arrayed in a square formation! However, Wang soon realized that the stars in the formation were in a synchronous orbit above the planet, moving together against the dimmer, more distant background of the Milky Way.

The stars in the formation closest to the direction of dawn were also the brightest, shining with a silver light that cast shadows on the ground. The brightness decreased as one moved away from that edge. Wang counted more than thirty stars along each edge of the formation, which meant a total of more than a thousand stars. The slow movement of the obviously artificial formation against the starry universe exuded a solemn power.

A man standing next to him nudged him lightly and spoke in a low voice, “Ah, Great Copernicus, why have you come so late? Three cycles of civilizations have passed, and you’ve missed many great enterprises.”

“What is that?” Wang asked, pointing at the formation in the sky.

“The Trisolaran Interstellar Fleet. It’s about to begin its expedition.”

“Trisolaran civilization has already achieved the capacity for interstellar flight?”

“Yes. All those magnificent ships can reach one-tenth the speed of light.”

“That is a great accomplishment, as far as I understand it, but it still seems too slow for interstellar flight.”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. The key is finding the right target.”

“What’s the fleet’s destination?”

“A star with planets about four light-years away—the closest star to the Trisolaran system.”

Wang was surprised. “The closest star to us is also about four light-years away.”

“You?”

“The Earth.”

“Oh, that’s not very surprising. In most regions of the Milky Way, the distribution of stars is fairly even. It’s the result of star clusters acting under the influence of gravity. The distance between most stars is between three and six light-years.”

A loud, joyous cry erupted from the crowd. Wang looked up and saw that every star in the square formation was rapidly growing brighter. This was due to the light emitted by the ships themselves. Their combined illumination soon overwhelmed the dawn, and one thousand stars became one thousand little suns. Trisolaris was bathed in glorious daylight, and the crowd raised their hands and formed an endless prairie of uplifted arms.

The Trisolaran Fleet began to accelerate, solemnly gliding across the dome of the sky, skimming past the giant, just-risen moon’s tip, casting a dim blue glow against the moon’s mountains and plains.

The joyous cry subsided. The people of Trisolaris mutely gazed as their hope gradually shrunk in the western sky. They would not know the outcome of the launch in their lifetimes, but four or five hundred years from now, their descendants would receive the news from a new world, the beginning of a new life for Trisolaran civilization. Wang stood with them, silently gazing, until the phalanx of a thousand stars shrank into a single star, and until that star disappeared in the western night sky. Then the following text appeared:

The Trisolaran Expedition to the new world has begun. The fleet is still in flight.…

Three Body
is over. When you have returned to the real world, if you remain true to the promise you’ve made, please attend the meet-up of the Earth-Trisolaris Organization. The address will be in the follow-up e-mail you receive.

PART III

SUNSET FOR HUMANITY

21

Rebels of Earth

There were many more attendees this time than at the last Three Body meet-up. They met at the employee cafeteria of a chemical plant. The factory had already been moved elsewhere, and the interior of the building, which was about to be demolished, was worn out but spacious. About three hundred people were gathered here, and Wang Miao noticed many familiar faces: celebrities and elites of various fields; famous scientists, writers, politicians, and so on.

The first thing to attract Wang’s attention was the strange device at the center of the cafeteria. Three silver spheres, each slightly smaller than a bowling ball, hovered and swirled over a metal base. Wang guessed the device was probably based on magnetic levitation. The orbits of the three spheres were completely random: a real-life version of the three-body problem.

The others didn’t pay much mind to the artistic portrayal of the three-body problem. Instead, they focused on Pan Han, who was standing on top of a broken table in the middle of the cafeteria.

“Did you murder comrade Shen Yufei?” a man asked.

“Yes,” Pan said, perfectly calm. “It’s because the Adventists have traitors like her in our midst that the Organization faces the crisis it does today.”

“Who gave you the right to kill?”

“I did it out of a sense of duty to the Organization.”

“Duty? I think you’ve always had malice in your heart!”

“What do you mean by that?”

“What has the Environment Branch done under your leadership? Your charge is to exploit and create environmental problems to make the population loathe science and modern industry. But in reality, you’ve only used our Lord’s technology and predictions to gain riches and fame for yourself!”

“Do you think I became famous for myself? To my eyes, the entire human race is a pile of garbage. Why would I care what they think? But if I’m not famous, how do I direct and channel their thinking?”

“You always pick the easy tasks. What you’ve done could have been better accomplished by regular environmentalists. They’re more sincere and passionate than you, and with just a little guidance, we could easily take advantage of their actions. Your Environment Branch should be creating environmental disasters and then exploiting them. For example, disseminating poison in reservoirs, leaking toxic waste from chemical plants … have you done any of those? No, not a single one!”

“We had devised numerous programs and plans, but the commander vetoed them all. Anyway, such acts would have been stupid, at least until recently. The Biology and Medicine Branch once created a catastrophe from the overuse of antibiotics, but that was soon detected. And the rash actions of the European Detachment almost drew attention to us.”

“Talk about drawing attention to us—you just murdered someone!”

“Listen to me, comrades! Sooner or later, it would have been unavoidable. You must already know that the governments of the world are preparing for war. In Europe and North America, they’re already cracking down on the Organization. Once the crackdown begins here, the Redemptionists will no doubt side with the government. So our first priority is to purge the Redemptionists from the Organization.”

“That is not within your authority.”

“Of course the commander must decide. But, comrades, I can tell you right now that the commander is an Adventist!”

“Now you’re just making things up. Everyone knows the scope of the commander’s power. If the commander really is an Adventist, then the Redemptionists would have been purged long ago.”

“Maybe the commander knows something we don’t. Perhaps that’s what the meeting today is about.”

After this, the crowd’s attention turned away from Pan Han to the crisis before them. A famous scientist who had won the Turing Award jumped onto the table and began to speak. “The time for talk is over. Comrades, what should be our next step?”

“Start a global rebellion!”

“Then we’re asking to be killed.”

“Long live the spirit of Trisolaris! We shall persevere like the stubborn grass that resprouts after every wildfire!”

“A rebellion will finally reveal our existence to the world. As long as we have an appropriate plan of action, I’m sure many people will support us.”

This last remark came from Pan Han, and many applauded.

Someone yelled, “The commander is here!” The crowd parted to form a path.

Wang looked up and felt dizzy. The world turned white and black in his eyes, and the only spot of color was the person who had just appeared.

Surrounded by a group of young bodyguards, the commander in chief of the Earth-Trisolaris rebels, Ye Wenjie, walked steadily into the crowd.

Ye stood in the middle of the space the crowd cleared for her, raised a bony fist, and—with a resolve and strength that Wang could not believe she possessed—said, “Eliminate human tyranny!”

The crowd responded in a way that had clearly been rehearsed countless times: “The world belongs to Trisolaris!”

“Hello, comrades,” Ye said. Her voice returned to the gentleness that Wang knew. It was only now that he could be sure that it was really her. “I haven’t been well lately, and haven’t spent much time with all of you. But now the situation is urgent, and I know everyone is under a great deal of pressure, so I’ve come to see you.”

“Commander, take care of yourself,” someone in the crowd said. Wang could hear the heartfelt concern.

Ye said, “Before we move on to more important matters, let’s take care of one small detail. Pan Han—” She kept her eyes on the crowd even as she called his name.

“Here, Commander.” Pan emerged from the crowd. Earlier, he had tried to lose himself in the throng. He appeared calm, but the terror in his heart was obvious. The commander had not called him
comrade,
a bad sign.

“You committed a severe violation of the Organization’s rules.” Ye spoke without looking at Pan. Her voice remained kind, as though talking to a child who had been naughty.

“Commander, the Organization is facing a crisis of survival! If we don’t take decisive measures and cleanse the traitors and enemies within, we will lose everything!”

Ye looked up at Pan, her eyes affectionate. But his breath stopped for a few seconds. “The ultimate goal and ideal of the ETO
is
to lose everything. Everything that now belongs to the human race, including us.”

“Then you must be an Adventist! Commander, please openly declare this to be true, because it’s very important. Am I right, comrades? Very important!” he shouted, and waved an arm as he looked around. But the crowd remained mute.

“This request is not yours to make. You have seriously violated our code of conduct. If you want to make an appeal, now is the time. Otherwise, you must bear the responsibility.” Ye spoke slowly, enunciating every word, as though afraid the child she was teaching had trouble understanding.

“I went intending to eliminate Wei Cheng, that math prodigy. The decision was made by Comrade Evans and ratified by the committee unanimously. If he really succeeds in creating a mathematical model of the three-body problem that gives a complete solution, our Lord will not come, and the great enterprise of Trisolaris on Earth will be ruined. I only shot at Shen Yufei since she shot at me first. I was acting in self-defense.”

Ye nodded. “Let us believe you. This is, after all, not the most important issue. I hope we can continue to trust you. Now, please repeat the request you made to me just now.”

Pan was stunned for a second. That she had moved on didn’t seem to relax him. “I … asked that you openly declare yourself to be an Adventist. After all, the action plan of the Adventists is also your ideal.”

“Then repeat the plan of action.”

“Human society can no longer rely on its own power to solve its problems. It can also no longer rely on its own power to restrain its madness. Therefore, we ask our Lord to come to this world, and with Its power, forcefully watch over us and transform us, so as to create a brand-new, perfect human civilization.”

“Are the Adventists loyal believers in this plan?”

“Of course! Commander, please do not believe false rumors.”

“It’s not a false rumor!” a man shouted. He made his way to the front. “I’m Rafael, from Israel. Three years ago, my fourteen-year-old son died in an accident. I had his kidney donated to a Palestinian girl suffering kidney failure as an expression of my hope that the two peoples could live together in peace. For this ideal, I was willing to give my life. Many, many Israelis and Palestinians sincerely strove toward the same goal by my side. But all this was useless. Our home remained trapped in the quagmire of cycles of vengeance.

“Eventually, I lost hope in the human race and joined the ETO. Desperation turned me from a pacifist into an extremist. Also, probably because I donated so much money to the Organization, I became a core member of the Adventists. Let me tell you now, the Adventists have their own secret agenda.

“And it is this: The human race is an evil species. Human civilization has committed unforgivable crimes against the Earth and must be punished. The ultimate goal of the Adventists is to ask our Lord to carry out this divine punishment: the destruction of all humankind.”